HOWELL PORCH have huge mill-stone shaped bases; and there is only a nave and north aisle. On the floor of the aisle is a half figure of a mother with a small figure of her daughter, both deeply cut on a fourteenth century stone slab. It is curious to come on a monument to "Sir Charles Dymok of Howell, 2nd son to Sir Edward Dymok of Scrielsby"—whose daughter married Sir John Langton. The tomb, with coloured figures of the knight and his lady kneeling at an altar, was put up about 1610 by his nephew, another Sir Edward Dymok.
There is a broken churchyard cross, the base inscribed to John Spencer, rector, 1448. The church is dedicated to St. Oswald. Ivy is growing inside the nave, having forced its way right through the wall—a good illustration of the mischief that ivy can do.
The mention of the stone coffin in Howell church porch calls to mind a similar case in a Cumberland church, where the sexton, pointing it out to a visitor, said: "Ah think thet a varra good thing; minds 'em o' their latter end, ye knaw; an' its varra useful for umberellas."
Heckington is a town-like village on the main road, and its splendid church, which faces you at the end of the street, as at Louth, is one of the wonders of Lincolnshire. It is entirely in the Decorated style, with lofty spire and four very high pinnacles. It owes its magnificence to the fact that the great abbey at Bardney, which had a chantry here, obtained a royal licence in 1345 to appropriate the church. Certainly it is the most perfect example of a Decorated church in the kingdom.
The nave is remarkably high and wide, and the building of it, as in the case of Wilfrid's great church at Hexham, apparently took thirty-five years. The dimensions are 150 feet by eighty-five, and the masonry, owing probably to the leisurely way in which it was built, is remarkably good throughout. The statue niches have a few of their figures still. The porch, with its waved parapet richly carved, with a figure of our Lord above, still has its original roof. On either side are double buttresses, each with its canopied niche; and the nave ends with handsome turrets. The transept windows are very fine, and the seven-light east window, a most superb one, is only surpassed in its dimensions and beautiful tracery by those at Selby and Carlisle. It is filled with good glass by Ward and Hughes, put up in memory of Mr. Little, by his wife, 1897.
